


A Christmas Visit

by InfinitexJester



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Family, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinitexJester/pseuds/InfinitexJester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm aware that in reality, Jack had no memories so this little meeting would have been impossible. But, in the spirit of Christmas I decided to write about family and not many people have sacrificed as much for them as Jack did. Happy Christmas, everyone! Marked for spoilers!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Christmas Visit

The house was too warm for him, lit up with the cooking fire as it was. He couldn't stand to stay near it for long; to let the chill in his skin thaw, but still he couldn't resist.

The wooden door opened and he perked up, waiting with bated breath. A small girl with trailing brown hair and worried eyes appeared and he smiled. Yes, she was safe after all. His eyes traced the familiar lines of her face and he breathed a sigh of relief. If one good thing had come out of that terrible night on the lake, it was that she had survived it. A memory came back to him unbidden of a time when he'd been a human boy again, when the village had held their annual fire festival. Small as she was, she'd jumped up and down to see over the heads of the adults but to no avail. Jack had swept her up, laughing, onto his shoulders. She'd been so light, he remembered, as if she could jut melt away. But she had laughed just as loud as him and clung on tight, marvelling to see the dancing flames. He hadn't much cared for the festivities himself and would rather have been away chasing mischief, but he ended up enjoying it that night. Her joy had been infectious.

Passing him on her way to the well with a bucket clunking at her feet, he called out to her. Nothing. Of course, why had he expected his sister would have heard him? He was practically a ghost after all. He watched as she struggled with the heavy load of water, legs wavering back and forth in a clumsy fashion. Jack breathed out, the air becoming a mist of snowflakes that flew away, mingling and forming in her hair. She stopped, eyes moving around as if searching. He moved closer then, circling her in his bare feet.

"Did you feel that then? Did you know... know that it was me?"

She didn't speak but her small face broke into a smile and she ran through her hair, displacing a snowflake. She brought the fragile crystals up close to her face, the frost making the tip of her nose red – and then she laughed. Just the same laugh she had always used when Jack had played games with the kids.

He was filled with sudden hope and then he called the wind to him; danced on the air and let the ice particles flow from his staff. The water in her bucket froze solid at the touch and then leaning down, he drew a pale finger across its surface. He stepped back, proud of his picture and then waited for her to notice. It didn't take her long and she dropped the bucket with a smack onto the cold ground. There, on the frozen water was a fairly accurate depiction of two people watching a fire, the smaller one clinging to the other. Her face paled and she looked around, startled. Her gaze passed right through him but for once Jack didn't care. She knew, he was sure of it, she knew.

"Goodbye, little sis. Stay out of trouble, okay?"

His voice carried on the wind and for a second, just a second; he wondered if she had heard it. His eyes crinkled with a smile and then he let the North wind pull him away. Now, the one thing that would make this day perfect would be to chase that overgrown rabbit...


End file.
